Why we're ditching dairy

Like most people of my generation, I grew up drinking lots of milk.

Perhaps it was because of the infamous advert - “Accrington Stanley, who are they?!” (youngsters out there, check this out on YouTube) - or because my brothers and I used to fill up our cereal bowls to the brim with milk and then precariously slurp from the bowl. The more recent Wagamama advert may portray that same motion, but slurping from bowls was famous in the Brown household way before Ramen noodles went mainstream in the UK.

At home, in school or after sport: it was normal for us to drink copious amounts of the stuff.

[By the time you get to this part of the story, I’m hoping you’ve watched the Accrington Stanley video. If you haven’t, please do so now.]

Back in the day we enjoyed the taste of milk, but also thought drinking milk would make us into big strong boys who would go on to play professional football. For most of us that wasn’t the case…but milk was romanticised and glorified to the point where it still conjures nostalgic family memories for me. More recently, I’ve come to realise that dairy is not a necessity from a health perspective and too much of it can have quite the opposite effect.

As you may know, we dropped meat & fish from all our recipes last year. We did this because I was astounded at the impact that animal agriculture is having on our environment. This realisation led me to believe that we can truly make an impact through our food choices. I believe we as a business have a responsibility to change those choices and we as consumers have the opportunity to implement this change.

Getting to the point: The purpose of this story is to let you know that by summer 2018 BOL will be ditching dairy from all our products and becoming 100% plant-based.

When I learnt that it takes 1,000 litres of water to create 1 litre of milk and other similar stats…I knew it was time for us to take the plunge. Not only is it a natural next step for us, it also means reducing our impact on the environment: in just one year removing dairy will save 7 million litres of water, 194 tonnes of C02 emissions and 91 thousand square meters of farmland.

When we set up BOL, we put taste above all else: BOL recipes need to taste fantastic. To date, we’ve used ingredients like feta cheese and crème fraiche in our recipes to help deliver on this. Today, as we begin testing our recipes without dairy, I’m convinced that we can still deliver on our flavour promise while also doing some good to our planet. Re-developing the BOL range recipes to be 100% plant-based will be a fantastic journey to achieving delicious, nutritious and sustainable food.

I hope you join us on this journey by trying one of our new 100% plant based recipes and spreading the good news. Don’t forget to share your thoughts with us along the way, we’ve learnt so much from you so far.

Eat plants, love life. Better for you, kinder to the planet.

Bye for now,

Paul